Patients do not trust the Government over the future of medical records because they have been lied to about NHS plans in the past, health service leaders have said.

Plans to extract patient data from GP files have been put on hold for six months amid concerns about confidentiality and criticism that the national data-sharing scheme has been poorly communicated.

At a conference in Manchester NHS leaders suggested that public lack of confidence in the project reflected a wider mistrust of Government - caused by ministers’ failures to keep other promises.

Roy Lilley, a former NHS trust chairman, said that better use of data was vital to improve the quality of care.

But he said politicians had made it more difficult for the public believe their commitments about the future use of the records, because previous ministers’ pledges - such as a promise to have no top-down reorganisation of the NHS - had been broken.

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He said the real problem for many critics of the scheme was “we don’t trust the government.”

Mr Lilley, who runs a website for healthcare managers, said: “They lied to us about the Health and Social Care Act. They could be lying to us about the use of our data. It’s been a balls up. It’s a balls up of the politicians’ making. We can learn. There is much to criticise, but criticise the politicians - and not the NHS.”

He told the Health and Care Innovation Expo that data had “revolutionised” attitudes towards healthcare, and could vastly improve the quality of care.

Tim Kelsey, national director for patients and information at NHS England, which is in charge of the scheme, said efforts to explain the programme to the public so far were “not good enough”.

He told delegates: “For a safe NHS we need a data-driven health service. My message is we have to make this work. We are going to make this work. We are going to guarantee that people’s data is safe. we are going to have a proper public conversation.”

A poll of 2,000 adults by the Royal College of General Practitioners found two thirds of people do not feel the public was well informed about the plans and their right to opt out.

Previously, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that he was going to introduce new legislation to ensure that insurance companies could not buy data through the scheme.

Mr Hunt wanted to provide “rock-solid” assurance to patients that confidential information could not be sold for commercial insurance purposes, the Department of Health said.

The Daily Telegraph disclosed that hospital records of 47 million patients were sold to a society of actuaries for insurance purposes. Yesterday it emerged that similar data had been used to advise companies on how to target audiences via social media.